The Whole Veterinarian
Is it impossible for veterinarians to aim for more balance? The Whole Veterinarian podcast helps to share experiences and start a dialogue about how we can grow as people and professionals. As a female equine solo practitioner, mother and business owner, I've seen the challenges that face us. I want veterinarians to learn to be happier, healthier, wealthier and more grateful for the lives that they've created. Together, let’s learn how to develop a life we love.
The Whole Veterinarian
VET TRUCK CONFIDENTIAL: What Does Growth Really Mean For Your Veterinary Practice?
What does growth really mean for your veterinary practice? In this honest conversation on Vet Truck Confidential, Dr. Stacey Cordivano joins equine veterinarians Dr. Misty Gray and Dr. Kelly Zeytoonian to challenge conventional wisdom about practice expansion.
The veterinary profession often glorifies the hustle, celebrating packed schedules and constant growth. But is adding more clients always the answer? Our three experienced equine practitioners reveal a potentially surprising truth: a simple 1% price increase can boost profitability by 11% without seeing a single additional patient. This insight alone could transform how you approach your practice's financial health.
We explore what growth means at different career stages - from the early years focused on building clientele to later phases where quality of care and work-life balance take precedence. Dr. Cordivano shares her personal journey from initial growth to strategic client selection, while Dr. Gray discusses the power of being content with your current practice size. Dr. Zeytoonian discusses the constant need to tweak what is the right amount of support for her team.
For those looking to increase profitability, we offer practical alternatives to simply adding more appointments: proper product markup (minimum 65%), increasing services to existing clients, and investing in support staff to maximize billable hours. These strategies allow for growth without the burnout that often accompanies an expanding client base.
Perhaps most importantly, we emphasize aligning practice decisions with your personal vision rather than fear or industry pressure. Whether you dream of a four-day work week or aim to pay off student loans rapidly, success should be defined on your terms.
Ready to rethink what practice growth means for you? Listen now, and don't forget to do your homework: check your medication markups, evaluate your billable hours, and take time to reflect on whether your current path aligns with your long-term vision.
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Welcome to the Whole Veterinarian Podcast. My name is Dr Stacey Cordovano and I hope that this is a place where we can all learn to be happier, healthier, wealthier and more grateful for the lives that we've created. In this series, vet Truck Confidential, I am joined by Dr Misty Gray and Dr Kelly Zeytoonian, and we have a more casual discussion on topics that are relatable to us as equine veterinarians. We hope you enjoy them and, as always, we'd love your feedback. If you want to hear something new or different, please get in touch and send us advice or suggestions, as always. Thank you for your time and for listening, and we hope you enjoy today's episode. Welcome back to another episode of Vet Truck Confidential. I'm so excited to be here with Kelly and Misty. How are you ladies doing? Awesome, it's a beautiful day.
Misty Gray:Doing great Getting ready to go to the beach.
Stacey Cordivano:Oh fun, that's fun. Kelly and I kind of got back from beaches recently, so we're all enjoying summer, that's for sure. Tahoe's a beach, isn't it?
Kelly Zeytoonian:Yeah, but I avoided the beach. We were hiking and staying away from people, okay.
Stacey Cordivano:Whatever floats your boat.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Or doesn't float your boat.
Stacey Cordivano:All right. So the Decade One members this month which this podcast rolls into their curriculum. They are talking and learning about P&Ls and cash flow statements and numbery things. Boring Can be fun for some people but are a little hard to talk about in a podcast. So we are trying to think of something kind of related. That would be beneficial and, you know, might spark interest or discussion later on. So we decided to talk about practice growth and whether you're choosing to do that, whether you're intentionally not choosing to do that how you go about doing that.
Stacey Cordivano:So, yeah, you guys good to go with that. Yep, yeah, let's do it. Okay, we were thinking about this episode and then we came up with really three really good takeaways, and then Missy had the great suggestion to just share them up front and then go on and talk about whatever else we sidebar into later, but make sure we at least highlight the three takeaways that we want to talk about. So take it away, Mist.
Misty Gray:Okay, Number one key takeaway not all practices are created equal. Grow or don't at your speed and for your desired practice goals.
Stacey Cordivano:Number two the fastest way to grow from a revenue perspective is to increase prices. We will make sure to link a resource below that came out from AP, from information from Decade One and VMG members about average prices in the last couple of years.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Perfect, yeah. And just to add a little bit more to the fastest way to grow revenue a 1% increase in prices can increase your profitability by 11%. So it's a huge number and that really the profitability is kind of key. Growth is one thing, and looking at your numbers and your revenue year over year and saying I'm billing more this year than I was last year, that's great, as long as your profitability is staying the same or improving.
Kelly Zeytoonian:If your profitability is dropping at the sake of an increase in revenue, that means you're working harder to take home less. And if you're sitting here scoffing at me and saying, well, I'm not the owner, so I'm not taking that home anyway, you as an associate are benefiting from a more profitable practice by things like reinvestment in new equipment, bonuses at the end of the year, ability to hire additional support staff or additional veterinarians, et cetera. So you're really looking for that profitability number as a metric for the practice's overall health and a healthy practice. Equine-specific ranges between 10% and 15% that's kind of the number If you're looking at those financial sheets you should be hitting or hoping to hit.
Stacey Cordivano:Those are three amazing takeaways. I think it was really smart to start with that. And now?
Kelly Zeytoonian:you can stop listening, because you have all the information that you need. Have a great day.
Stacey Cordivano:But it does reiterate the fact that understanding P&L is important, because that's where you find out a lot of that information. So, you know, taking the time to look at that and things like that. Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit and get a little bit more our style of things. What does growth look like for you, and maybe what does it look like in the past? Misty, you want to start.
Misty Gray:Yeah, I'm thinking about that, Stacey, you go first. Give me a second to think about it.
Stacey Cordivano:Okay, I'll answer my own question In the past. I added in the past because for me it's like very different now than in many stages of my life. Like, clearly, opening the practice, it was like growth, growth, growth, growth growth. And I didn't know a lot of these things and I burned out because I was not becoming more profitable, I was just becoming busier, becoming more profitable, I was just becoming busier.
Stacey Cordivano:And once I've learned some of these things, mostly thanks to Kelly and the SEP seminars that idea of like 1% increase in prices to get 11% growth was like huge for me. So I really focused on actually lowering the number of clients, total clients, and increasing billing by increasing pricing and like increasing the quality of care I was giving to each patient. So that was sort of like the middle of my working career. And then, now that I have a partner first an associate, now a partner we are looking at overall growth of the practice, but still in a very measured and sustainable way. So we do not just take any new client. We are still pretty selective about who we take on and if they're a good match, values wise, and what they're looking for in a veterinarian. But I am in kind of a new phase in life where we are looking to actually grow the number of clients we see again.
Misty Gray:So that's my question. I think I need definitions first. When we're talking about growth, what are the factors of growth? Is it more clients, better profitability, more money in the bank?
Kelly Zeytoonian:That's going to be different depending on who you ask right Like. So for me, I think my beginning, similar to Stacey's, was like growing enough that I could bring on additional employees that I didn't have to be on call all the time right, so making enough money that you could do that.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Yeah, like making enough money, having enough of a client base and enough revenue coming in that I could then hand over business to an associate and have them earn a living that they were looking for, while maintaining you know what the practice needed to support them and to support adding on the support team members and buying the new equipment that would come with additional associates. So that's still like. It still feels like that's the game that I play at Starwood Equine. I have found that there is this equilibrium of like three to four vets per location. That really is, in my mind. It's a sweet spot for like how many technicians you need, how much equipment you need.
Kelly Zeytoonian:It covers on call in a fairly like equitable and manageable way when you look at how often you know how many weeknights, how many weekends, and so I'm in a little bit of a growth state because we're adding on a couple of people to really like meet that sweet spot in both locations.
Kelly Zeytoonian:But after that and there are fits and spurts of it, right, depending upon how many employees we have and who we're hiring for and who we're not. After that, I think my really goal for growth amongst the team is growth from like an efficiency and internal standpoint, meaning the people that are on the team are happy in the work that they're doing, they're feeling fulfilled, or if they're looking for a challenge, I'm giving them those opportunities, like our vet assistants to go and grow by pursuing their RVT licensing, or the veterinary staff to go and grow by adding on specialty services like chiropractic or acupuncture or rehabilitation. So it's like for Starwood you have to grow enough to have the revenue. It's more of like fine tuning to make sure the people that are on the bus are in the right seats on the proverbial Starwood Equine bus.
Stacey Cordivano:I think you could also look at growth from, like Kelly mentioned, like personal growth of her employees within the practice, but also you could look at it like growth of your culture or cohesion. You could spend an entire year focusing on not growing the practice numerically, necessarily, but growing in how everybody interacts, or like getting less toxic or all sorts of things that we talk about from like a practice culture standpoint, which I think ultimately would end up growing the practice numbers right, like we know from the data that employees who are engaged have less turnover, and then like that's going to cost the practice less money. But I think you could look at it in totally different ways and I think solo practitioners can also still look at growth in unique ways as well, as far as, even if they don't want to hire, I think they could look at their personal situations and growth in different ways than group practices.
Misty Gray:It does seem, though, like most people, though if you're talking about I'm growing my practice, it's focused on finances, right, I mean that's?
Misty Gray:I would imagine most people that are interested in the decade one curriculum in this portion are specifically interested in finances.
Misty Gray:Yeah, probably, I don't know. From hearing you guys talk and then thinking about it in my head I'm I realize that I am just not interested in growing financially at the moment. I'm happy with where I sit and how much work there is to do, and I like being like just on the cusp of more than I want to do, and I'm kind of in a sweet spot there. I did take on a couple of new clients, new accounts this year, and they are bigger barns as opposed to, you know, just a single owner client, and that has really filled up the schedule in a nice way. So I think maybe, if I were looking at growth for my own type of practice, a tool for that would be to try to connect more with some of like a reconnect with some of these barns that have multiple owners and patients available so that I can still do, you know, the one appointment but lots of horses at a time or you could just like, yeah, not be interested in growth at all this year.
Stacey Cordivano:You I mean you recently told me a story about how you declined a client that you know probably wasn't a good values match but like you were very happy about that and I think that's nice to hear.
Misty Gray:Like that people can be at a point where they're like, not interested in growing and that you know that that situation the client is actually a lovely person and a good values match Um. In most ways they're just physically in a distance that's just outside of it would be stressful to me to try to make that happen repeatedly, and so I fought against my need to say yes, you know, because it's a person that I like and instead thought about how uncomfortable it was going to be every single time I needed to go out there to shift things around here to make it happen. So I politely said I can't do it now.
Stacey Cordivano:Right, but in a culture that's kind of always hustle, hustle, hustle, add more and more and more, especially equine veterinarians, like there can be times that you're not growing and think I mean that again for people to give themselves sort of that grace.
Kelly Zeytoonian:And yes, we're talking about growth, but you shouldn't feel uncomfortable if you're like Misty and you don't actually want to grow, in that sense that we're kind of focusing in on. I mean, remember, misty, you just saying that and not having to make that drive both ways opens you up to fit in probably several more patients at one of those bigger barns, you know so, it's way more efficient. One of those bigger barns? You know so, it's way more efficient. So if we were looking at your revenue versus profitability, your profitability is going to be much better because you're not spending all that windshields time. So you know again, maybe from a revenue perspective you're not growing, but from an efficiency, from a fit to practice, from a profitability perspective you are like hitting all of the marks. So maybe it doesn't feel like growth because everybody like thinks that top number of, like total revenue is the end, all be all, but it's really not.
Stacey Cordivano:It also opens up time to go play pickleball or get manicure, which is also very good for your overall well-being and boundaries.
Misty Gray:I had an at-home pickleball net delivered yesterday that I put together in our driveway. That's awesome, yep. And three neighborhood kids showed up, one of them with my own. Two additional neighborhood kids showed up to play pickleball with me at six o'clock yesterday Perfect.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Good to be like the pickleball. You're like the Pied Piper pickleball.
Stacey Cordivano:That's interesting, though. Like there is discomfort in when talking about work and saying like no, I'm good, right, like, do you agree, I'm good, I'm not trying to grow, I'm not trying to add more clients, I'm not trying to work until eight o'clock at night, like that's not a badge of honor for me. We've probably talked about this before, but I just like emphasizing it as well, especially given the topic of this podcast.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Well, in prior culture, right, it's like, oh God, I've just had back-to-back days where I've had a million emergencies or we're just swamped. I mean, I find myself doing it too and, like I'm proud of I've been telling we've had discussions recently, right, we're down doctors no-transcript. So there is like a badge of honor of like making it through the days and seeing all the horses and getting all the things done.
Misty Gray:but, um, I think it's even healthier to say like no, I'm I'm really happy with where I am and it doesn't have to be so frenetic, well, and things can be finite, right, like I mean working hard to grow or build or um, or fill in the gaps until somebody else starts on like they're, they're, that's something to be proud of. That hard work is hard. So I mean we're and you're providing a good service, but that doesn't mean it has to be that perpetually to be worthy. You're allowed to also go through periods of time that are just comfortable yeah.
Kelly Zeytoonian:So maybe let's talk about that a little bit. Like we've got maybe new practice owners or new practitioners listening in on this podcast and that new practice owner is thinking like I do want to do what you all are talking about. I want to be able to afford to hire a new person or a brand new graduate, new associate who's like I do want to grow in what I'm billing for the practice so that I bring value to this clinic that's employing me. How can that be done in obviously an effective way, but also in a way that honors and prevents burnout and keeps people from getting into that frenetic phase for too long?
Misty Gray:You know, looking at it from an associate perspective, looking back over my time in practice, recognizing. I went into practice in 2007, so that's a different generation, I think, of practitioners. But my biggest concern at that period of time was paying bills. I wanted to pay my bills, I wanted to save some money, I wanted to hit my student loans, and so the thing that drove me was finances and income. I didn't have a significant other. I lived in some basement apartment, you know, and I was fine with that. So I and I was eager and excited to be out doing the work. I was learning a time that was my own. My experience was growing and so, you know, I have seen over the years I did hit a point where I was burnt out. That wasn't until much later, when I had kids. But there was a great middle ground there where I knew that I was not thrilled and feeling overdone and like. That should have been the time to tackle my own fear of being lazy or fear of failure, like, but. But I wasn't burnt out yet. That would have been the time to listen to myself and say like, hey, it's okay to take your foot off of the gas, like you're financially, you're doing okay. You have a partner at this point that's also contributing financially. You're doing okay, you have a partner at this point that's also contributing financially. You know you don't have to keep pedal to the metal until you're in a bad place. You know.
Misty Gray:The flip side to that is that we also had, during that period of time, students that would come in, or early graduates or through our internship program, that were so fearful of burning out that they did not feel comfortable doing some of the like gosh, that sounds bad. But they were also coming from a place of fear. I don't want to burn out, so I'm gonna manage my schedule super carefully. And so I think in general, when we were all operating from fear, none of us were meeting all of our needs. Like, it's okay to have periods of time where, if what you're looking to make or the need you're trying to fill is money, to work in accordance with that and likewise and not be scared of that, because you can change the trajectory of your career later. Also, if that's the way you've been working and it's not feeling good anymore, you know you don't operate from fear that you're going to be seen as lazy. Does that make sense, or is that too many words?
Stacey Cordivano:No, makes sense, I think it's. It kind of highlights how difficult it is to shift right Like without conscious deliberation, on your new stage of life which, like we go through new stages of life all the time, whether it's moving, a new job, a new practice, culture, a baby, a marriage, a health crisis, an aging parent right Like without pausing and reassessing, which I don't think any of us did for a really long time. It just highlights that you just keep going on what you were doing before until all of a sudden it doesn't work and you like run into a brick wall. But I I mean to your question, kelly, of like for someone trying to get up and going, I don't know, I mean my first inclination is to say like there is just going to have to be some heavy lifting done. I think that can still be done with boundaries and like better boundaries than I had when I started.
Stacey Cordivano:But I do think there's there's just a lift when you're getting a practice going, or if you really want to bump in your base salary, if you're on like a base plus production, if you really want to bump that up, you're going to have to hustle, I think. I mean, I think that's just the bottom line. And then certainly you know, from an owner perspective or speaking to an owner, that price setting like it's crucial. I mean when we went through decade one and then when we went through SEPs and like you gave some of the numbers on like minimum markups and things like I changed all that and like markedly, markedly improved my profitability, like it was wild for not doing anything differently other than changing some prices.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Oh, it makes my little heart so happy.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Yeah, and I think I mean there's probably some practice owners screaming hallelujah at what you just said.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Right, I have found not necessarily within associates at Starwood Equine, but just kind of like the feelings I get in the conversations I've had, whether it's with new graduates or with employers is there is a sense of like wanting it all from a new grad but not really being willing to put in the work. And I think it's important to find a really happy balance. Right, it's cool if you want a four-day work week and you only want to be on call in an equitable rotation with everybody else, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you want it, you should find a practice that can offer it to you. But there are some compromises to that right. If you're only working four days or three days, you're just not going to be able to bill as much in that timeframe, which means you might not earn as much or you'll have a great base salary, but you're not going to be looking at production bonuses because you're just not meeting that mark. So this is like a little bit of a digression of like a conversation but it is important.
Stacey Cordivano:Yeah, I mean like two things can exist right and actually I think they can exist well together, right. Like I think that in a well supported practice where the culture is great and the mentorship's there and the communication is there, that's probably going to be a place where someone is willing to work harder or at least be more aware and transparent about what their needs are and understanding that maybe if they work three days a week, they're not going to get, you know, the highest new grad salary or even five years out salary. So I think I don't think they have to be completely disparate. It does feel like you like pick a side or the other, but like I don't actually think they have to be disparate things. I think in actuality, the cohesion of the two is where all practices should aim for, because then everyone would feel heard and well-supported and practice owners would get that buy-in and effort more Agree and I think that's where that like equilibrium and you know, like I, have employees who work two days a week.
Kelly Zeytoonian:I had one at one point one day a week, three days a week, four days a week, and it's, it's nice. I feel confident enough going into those conversations and saying like that's great, you're going to work that amount of time, this is what I can offer you for that, you know. And that may mean that, like we don't, we're not as profitable because now I'm adding on another employee to fit the missing gaps. We maybe aren't going to get that new piece of equipment until next year, or, you know, or people come and ask and say I saw this, this looks really cool, it'd be nice to add this service on, and it's like, all right, let's start documenting the times that we didn't have that service, that we would have used it to convince ourselves that we actually will pay for this new piece of equipment to offer.
Kelly Zeytoonian:So that's another way of growth. All growth isn't good. Offering a bunch of new services that you have to invest a ton in and you don't have enough buy-in from clients and you don't have enough people utilizing it. That's also not a good, you know, saying you've got a million services but only having one or two people use it a year is not a better idea, right yeah, and that's a quick way to burn through any profitability and then be really nervous.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Yeah, absolutely.
Misty Gray:I just think it's good to make a plan based off of what you envision instead of what you fear. Right? I envision myself success to be I'm going to work four days a week because I see myself doing this on day number five. I see this happening on the weekends that I share on call. So I'm going to make my choices to fit that vision and then it's not. You know, it's not. Well, you can only work four days a week, but that has almost like a lazy, negative connotation and like that is not the case. You're allowed to make whatever vision you want. You make a choice for that and you take all the pieces that go with it. Or I want to pay off my loans in five years. That's my vision. These are all the things I'm going to do in order to do that. And that might be, you know, six days a week and taking all the extra on call, right. But you're doing it from a place of something you believe in, a goal you're working towards instead of fear, I love that I do, too.
Stacey Cordivano:It's a good reminder. Just that being in a practice that supports that vision, though, is important, right, like I, probably in the past have been hard on the idea of like working six days a week. But there are people out there that do want to do that, that are gunning to knock down loans or whatever, or love the lifestyle, and you can surely find a practice that fits that, and if that is not for you, then you either design your own, or you surely find a practice that fits that, and if that is not for you, then you either design your own or you go find a practice that is supportive of a more time, balanced work week. So, kelly, any other thoughts from you about increasing profitability, aside from just raising prices?
Kelly Zeytoonian:Okay. So yeah, raising prices is number one. It is like the most efficient. You almost said it like I had this profitability without having to do anything. I mean you probably had to hit like three different buttons on your medical record system to like do the increase in price. So that's number one. And we'll put a resource in the notes from Harvard Business Review that goes over that 1% increase, leading to 11% profitability. So if people are interested, they can read that.
Stacey Cordivano:Yes, I had someone not believe me on that.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Yeah, we have a resource, so we didn't make it up Is that raising all prices?
Misty Gray:What's that? Is that raising all prices across the board?
Kelly Zeytoonian:But yeah, I mean yes, but there are also ways to strategically raise prices on more frequently used services. Or the other way of going about it would be like those high end, really boutique types of services have way higher margins on them. There's a lot of different ways that you can go about it, but that 1% across the board is really helpful. The second one I would say is making sure that your baseline pricing is appropriate. So the biggest place that we can take a hit is in not marking up our products enough, so the things that we sell. Many people are probably feeling like the crunch of online pharmacies and they want to compete with that online pharmacy pricing. You can't and we can run through those numbers. I've done a couple of other webinars on that. If you try to compete with pricing of like the chewies of the world, you can very quickly find yourself actually losing money on a sale of the product. Once you factor in credit card fees that you pay when the client you know charges it to their card. Sales tax that you have to pay for particular products state dependent any sort of production. That if you're an associate, if you're paid on production for those medications, or if you're an owner and you're paying out on sale of those. Very quickly the number just to throw out there is a minimum of 65% markup that needs to happen and if you are marking up less than that you could very well be actually paying out of pocket from the practice to deliver medications to a client. So that'd be step two.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Yes, it was painful to see how many yeah.
Kelly Zeytoonian:So yeah, increasing the prices.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Step two or maybe even I'd say step one before increasing those prices is making sure your baseline price is already meeting that at least 65% markup or not, you know, if not more, and then really like the efficiencies that you can create in what you're spending.
Kelly Zeytoonian:So if you have a new piece of equipment that you'd like to purchase but you really can't convince yourself that you're going to be using it enough to pay it off in whatever timeline you know timeline you feel is appropriate looking to the neighboring clinic to do equipment sharing or sometimes referring out for some of those bigger ticket items that you're just not doing enough of, is the better way to go than purchasing yourself. But if you can prove to yourself and convince yourself that the service will be received it's a pretty old study at this point, but it was a client survey and 20% of the clients interviewed said that they would use the veterinarian more if they offered additional services. So educating on the services that you currently offer and certainly like being very thoughtful in marketing and rolling out anything new that you're going to go after can certainly drive that revenue and in turn drive profitability, as long as you're pricing appropriately from the beginning.
Misty Gray:All right. So step number one I want to grow my practice. I'm going to increase my price. Step number two let's say I want to get more clients. What's the fastest way to do that? Right, because either you work the same amount.
Stacey Cordivano:Well, I would have a counter to that. I would say to increase what you're doing at each appointment, increase your average client transaction, as opposed to adding more clients.
Kelly Zeytoonian:That would be my Agree, Agree that like education to your current clientele and what you have to offer. Or, you know, taking that next step of pulling the x-ray off the truck and not saying you know, if it's still here next week, then we can x-ray. Like, let's get the x-rays done, right, Gosh? I mean, we talked about equipment and stuff like your x-ray will pay for itself over and over and over again, but you have to take it off the truck and actually use it.
Stacey Cordivano:And then another counter would be instead of investing in another piece of equipment, would be investing in support staff to do that for you, because I didn't do that for so long and I definitely didn't use the x-ray as much because of it. There you go.
Kelly Zeytoonian:So right. So that's a great point. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, right? So if you are looking at your day and you're doing a breakdown of your billable hours versus your, like, managerial, administrative hours and that's whether you're an associate or an owner how much time are you spending actually at appointments where billing is occurring, versus time in the car, in front of the windshield, driving between places or back at the office restocking the car, running lab work yourself, scheduling follow-up appointments, et cetera, like those are not, yes, you're working, but those are not hours that you are actually billing for your time. So hiring on an hourly worker who obviously has a skillset but doesn't have a DVM to push those couple hours potentially of work per day again opens you up to more billable hours. So, stacey, you're 100% correct. Like the only do what only you can do mantra has to come into effect.
Stacey Cordivano:Yeah, we reference you a lot for tech utilization and we throw Stephanie's name out a lot too. Shout out to Dr Vassar, but she's got three riding around with her and her days she's got two kids at home to get to her days are very efficient because she's working quickly and lots of people are helping Absolutely. So that'd be another way to grow to your point, misty. Otherwise you know it's like there's that's a whole marketing discussion.
Misty Gray:Yeah, but no. I think that's helpful because in my simple little brain, if I read I need to grow my practice, that directly translates to I need more people that I'm seeing and I love hearing alternatives to say that that's not the case. You can grow your practice by a click of the button increase your prices. You can grow your practice by offering more services to the people that you are already seeing.
Stacey Cordivano:I like that, all right. Should we give people a couple of things for homework and then wrap up? Let's do it. I think the homework should be to check if you have any medications Look at Regimate and Gashagard, from my experience that are not marked up 65%.
Kelly Zeytoonian:Mine would be think about how much time in your day is spent actually with billable time versus more of the behind the scenes pack and prep, and think about if there's anyone that you can delegate those additional tasks or extraneous tasks to and, if that's possible, do it. And if you are again, if you're an associate and you feel like some of those things are happening, have a candid conversation with management about getting some additional help for yourself.
Misty Gray:All right, I'm going to go for the low-hanging fruit and say just increase your prices across the board. And then I'm going to go for the not low-hanging fruit for a bonus homework and say check your vision, not your eyeballs, but your internal vision.
Stacey Cordivano:Are you still working? How much time do they need to set aside for that mist, to check your vision?
Misty Gray:Yeah, 10 minutes while you drink your coffee in the morning. Great, perfect. Make sure you're still on track with where you're wanting yourself to go.
Stacey Cordivano:Great advice. I like wrapping up with that. All right, ladies, good to see you.
Misty Gray:Bye, bye.
